Anaconda

Tucked along the old Route 66 corridor about 10 miles northwest of Grants in Cibola County, New Mexico, Anaconda grew up around a specific industrial purpose: the Anaconda Copper Company, headquartered in Butte, Montana, established a uranium ore processing plant here in the early 1950s to handle material extracted from the Jackpile Mine, which was at the time the largest open-pit uranium mine in the world. The plant and roughly 100 homes built for company supervisors and management formed a small but self-contained community tied entirely to that single operation.

Today Anaconda is a ghost town, and visitors come to take in the remnants of what was once a company town built around mid-century industrial activity. The setting along Route 66 gives it some added historic context, though the site itself reflects the stripped-down character typical of former industrial communities. Access via the old highway corridor makes it reachable by car, but anyone visiting should approach with modest expectations — this is a quiet, largely empty landscape rather than a preserved attraction.